2011 went into the books as a year of environmental disasters on an unprecedented global scale that have affected the lives and livelihoods of billions of people. The United States alone set a record with 12 separate billion-dollar weather/climate disasters in 2011, with an aggregate damage total of approximately $52 billion, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Thus, data backup and recovery has become a hot topic among IT managers. With this as background, data protection provider Acronis and the Ponemon Institute did some research to see how SMBs are approaching disaster recovery. The result is Acronis' second annual Disaster Recovery Index, released Feb. 1, which audited 18 countries and nearly 6,000 IT personnel. According to the survey findings in this report, a typical SMB today manages more than 100 servers, desktops and laptops and produces almost 40TB of fresh data each year. That is an awful lot of data to protect. The following slide show explains some of the research highlights.
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Confidence Clearly Lacking
SMBs in the U.S. are still lagging behind in their backup and disaster recovery plans. Only slightly more than 50 percent feel confident in the strategies they have in place.
Downtime Costing Big Bucks
According to the data, SMBs are still losing an average of $388,426 a year due to IT downtime.
Natural or Manmade Disasters Would Be Costly for U.S. SMBs
Nearly 50 percent of U.S. SMBs still fear substantial downtime in the event of a disaster.
To Err Is All Too Human
The survey found 64 percent of U.S. respondents said that the biggest contributor to downtime is human error.
Integration Good, Point Products Not So Good
The survey results showed 76 percent of U.S. respondents said the best way to improve backup and disaster recovery would be to have an integrated system that covered physical, virtual and cloud data assets.
Separate Backups Causing Complexity
Currently, more than half (53 percent) of the respondents use separate backup solutions for their physical and virtual environments.
Qualifications Not Optimal
Only 24 percent of U.S. respondents strongly feel that their staff is qualified to execute backup and disaster recovery operations.
Confidence in DR Not Where You'd Want It to Be
As part of the survey research, 18 industrialized countries were evaluated on a scale of -5.0 to +5.0, based on levels of confidence in their backup and disaster recovery capabilities. For overall confidence in backup and disaster recovery, Germany scored highest at 2.1. Brazil had the lowest level of confidence, at -0.9. The U.S. scored slightly below average, at 0.8.
Hard-Hit Japan Keeps Chin Up
Japan had the third-highest confidence levels at a rating of 1.9 in backup and disaster recovery capabilities, despite experiencing a year of catastrophic natural disasters in 2011.
Getting on the Right Track
Fully 64 percent of Japanese respondents said they now test their backups more regularly in response to 2011's natural disasters, and 57 percent have implemented a full-scale business continuity plan.
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2011 went into the books as a year of environmental disasters on an unprecedented global scale that have affected the lives and livelihoods of billions of people. The United States alone set a record with 12 separate billion-dollar weather/climate disasters in 2011, with an aggregate damage total of approximately $52 billion, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Thus, data backup and recovery has become a hot topic among IT managers. With this as background, data protection provider Acronis and the Ponemon Institute did some research to see how SMBs are approaching disaster recovery. The result is Acronis' second annual Disaster Recovery Index, released Feb. 1, which audited 18 countries and nearly 6,000 IT personnel. According to the survey findings in this report, a typical SMB today manages more than 100 servers, desktops and laptops and produces almost 40TB of fresh data each year. That is an awful lot of data to protect. The following slide show explains some of the research highlights.